Tolstoy might’ve reconsidered his maxim ‘every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’, had he lived to see Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County. Though Letts’ play focuses on an eccentric and drug-fuelled family, it is the universality of their family dynamic that cements this play’s success and appeal. Letts understands the tension between the support and destruction that a family can offer; it is where he finds the play’s humour and pathos, and it’s what transforms an entertaining drama into a significant commentary on the implacable influence of the family over the individual.

The fact Letts’ characters are a whisker away from cliché – you know who they are before they speak – makes for some forceful but truthful performances. Their eccentricities fuel the comedy, but Letts never lets his characters slip away from him: they might be larger than life, but they are never outside it. Every element of the play works in perfect synchronisation: the costumes are the characters, the three-level house is the family hierarchy and the colourful script is actually what these people might say. This level of cohesion means the play working hardest when we least expect it, investing the slightest scenes with a healthy subtext.

This synchronicity is embodied in Ana Kuzmanic’s intelligent set, which proves symbolic but still wonderfully real. The husband’s study is set outside the house, corroborating his confession, ‘my last refuge – my books.’ Inside the home, the open-plan layout emphasises the claustrophopic openness of family life. The three-storey house – doll-like and deceptively idyllic at first glance – hints at the family’s hierarchy, without forcing the point. Director Anne Shapiro incorporates the set’s symbolism at select and salient moments: when the young lodger and rebellious daughter meet they are on the top floor – harder to see and harder to hear, their peripheral position in the family is affecting and impossible to miss.

This internal cohesion makes the play seem a tad flippant on first reflection. The laughs come so easily and the scenes are so bombastic, that at times it feels like a sublime family sitcom; funny, realistic, but ultimately forgettable. It is only when the pivotal moments arise that we realise how well the laughs and the tears have been working in tandem. There is a wonderful scene near the end, when the now grown-up sisters stay up drinking and discussing their parents. It is an exquisitely observed encounter, with the ascerbic eldest sister delivering hard home-truths, the middle sister radiating resentment and the younger one giggling beneath the covers. Though the dialogue remains stubbornly lighthearted, the way these girls sit, the space they give each other and even the pajamas they wear attest to the permanence of their family dynamic and the roles it has cast these girls in.

This permanence of family life – that it continues when we are grown up and even when apart – is also reflected in Shapiro’s mesmering scene changes. The natural rhythm of family life is fed seamlessly into the play’s structure and the scene changes become a distinctive (but never distracting) feature. The space between the scenes is filled with those encounters we can’t quite see, arguments we cannot hear, confrontations between one floor and the next – all that noise and bustle that lesser playwrights forget, but that Letts recognises as a crucial part of family life.

It is a sign of this company’s maturity that despite some scene-stealing roles, this is ensemble work at its best. Deanna Dunagan is an exquisite mix of brittle nerves and angry passion as mother Violet, but is the daughters’ careful side-stepping that highlights her vulnerability. Rondj Reej lights up her scenes with some blinding one-liners (‘He’s not complicated honey, he’s just unemployed’) delivered with exquisite comic timing, but it is the heart-breaking confrontation between Reej and husband Paul O-Connor that unearths the shame these jokes conceal.

Letts’ play is such a complete work, that it is hard to isolate what exactly sets his play apart. There is an internal truth to the script that binds the play’s elements together – the joins are so smooth, that it is impossible to spot where and how they link up. This cohesion points to a writer with exceptional skill but real humility; an artist with enough confidence to let his play speak for itself and his audience take as much or as little as they like from it. 

Till 21 January 2009